Our friends at Avid have released a series of videos with Tom Graham and Gil Gowing outlining how the new cloud collaboration features in Pro Tools 12.5 will work in readiness for the upcoming release of Pro Tools 12.5 and they begin with Getting Started and The Dashboard.

Over the coming days we are going to feature these videos as part of our program to help you get ready for Cloud collaboration and Pro Tools 12.5. So before we get started with Avid Cloud Collaboration for Pro Tools, the first video gives you a quick overview of the project and how to set up your collaboration account.

In the second video Tom and Gil take us through the Dashboard as a starting point and give an overview of Projects which is a new concept that is built into Pro Tools 12.5 as part of the Avid cloud collaboration.

Getting Started with Pro Tools 12.5 Cloud Collaboration

The first thing you need to do is to create a user account for cloud collaboration. In Pro Tools 12.5 in the File menu you will find a new ‘Sign In’ option at the bottom. Click on that and you can sign into your Avid Account with your email address and password associated with your Avid Master Account.

Artist Chat In Pro Tools 12.5 Cloud Collaboration

In the Window menu in Pro Tools 12.5 you will find another new addition - Artist Chat. This new Artist chat window is the way you communicate with other Avid Cloud Collaboration users.

You will need to go in and set up a profile. It will pull some data from your Avid Master Account so you don’t have to type absolutely everything in. You will need to create a Display Name so consider what you would like to be known as in the Avid Artist Community and enter that in the Display Name box.

If you ever need to update your profile then click on your name in the top right hand corner of the Artist Chat window, back not Profile and update the appropriate info because perhaps you have moved.

The Dashboard In Pro Tools 12.5 Cloud Collaboration

The Dashboard was new in Pro Tools 12 and you will will see some changes in Pro Tools 12.5 in the Pro Tools Dashboard. The first thing you will notice is the addition of a Project tab to the two tabs we had before - Create and Recent. In the Create tab you can now create either a Project or a Session.

What Is a Project In Pro Tools 12.5 Cloud Collaboration?

A session is what we have been used to in Pro Tools for years. It creates a session on your hard drive and that is no different in Pro Tools 12.5. A session is stored locally on your system and you cannot collaborate on a session. A Project is essentially very similar to a session but the key difference is a Project lives in the cloud, which Avid introduced in Pro Tools First and now is being rolled out into Pro Tools 12.5 as part of the cloud collaboration workflow.

In the Create tab when you are creating a project you will see how many projects you can have and how many you have already created, so 2/10 means you can have up to 10 projects with the Avid Cloud Collaboration plan you are on and then the 2 shows that you already have 2 projects created in the cloud. You can lean more about this in our How Much Does It Cost article. With the Free Plan you can have up to 3 projects.

Creating Projects is just like creating sessions with all the same options including using templates, setting bit depth, sample rate and so.

What Do The Icons Mean In The Projects Tab Of The Pro Tools 12.5 Dashboard?

In the new Projects tab, you will see all the projects that you are associated with but there are some different types of icons that you need to be aware of.

If you have a dark icon with users overlaid then you are a collaborator in that project but you do not own this project. The purple icon with overlaid shows that you that there are collaborators assigned to it but the key difference is that you own this project with other people collaborating with you.

You can have purple project icon with no users overlaid on it and this shows that you have configured a project and so are the owner but there is no one has collaborated with you on it yet.

Watch out for the next videos in the series as we move closer to the release of Pro Tools 12.5 with the long awaited cloud collaboration.